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On the heels of a recent UCLA study that deflates claims of any link between crime and medical marijuana shops, researchers from Montana State University, University of Oregon, and University of Colorado Denver have released a study through the Bonn, Germany-based IZA, the Institute for the Study of Labor, that rejects the linkage between the legalization of medical marijuana and teen use.

While at least a dozen state legislatures are considering bills to allow the consumption of marijuana for medicinal purposes, the federal government has recently intensified its efforts to close medical marijuana dispensaries. Federal officials contend that the legalization of medical marijuana encourages teenagers to use marijuana and have targeted dispensaries operating within 1,000 feet of schools, parks and playgrounds. Using data from the national and state Youth Risk Behavior Surveys, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 and the Treatment Episode Data Set, we estimate the relationship between medical marijuana laws and marijuana use. Our results are not consistent with the hypothesis that legalization leads to increased use of marijuana by teenagers.

The war on weed is becoming more and more like a Ping-Pong tournament: the volley back and forth of information and enforcement of policy based on unfounded beliefs. It feels like one week the feds crackdown on dispensaries, the next a study gets introduced exclaiming the harmlessness of these storefronts.

Gil Kerlikowske

Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske

Gil Kerlikowske, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, claims with adamant opposition that marijuana is becoming more widely used as more states legislate medical marijuana laws, extrapolating from the generalization, “We know that any substance that is legally available is more widely used.”

The New York Times quoted Kerlikowske last December saying, “These last couple years, the amount of attention that’s been given to medical marijuana has been huge. And when I’ve done focus groups with high school students in states where medical marijuana is legal, they say, ‘Well, if its called medicine and it’s given to patients by caregivers, then that’s really the wrong message for us as high school students.’”

However, the new study about teen medical marijuana use found that “the impact of legalization on the probability of marijuana use in the past 30 days is no larger than 1.4 percentage points, and the impact of legalization on the probability of frequent marijuana use in the past 30 days is no larger than 0.4 percentage points.”

Scholarly evidence continues to counter the position of the US government; is this the beginning of the end of cannabis prohibition?

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